Dogs, cats, robins and ducking the question | Brief letters

Dry, but not necessarily safe, as Jan Hopkins explains.Polly Toynbee’s article (The Tories knew there would be an NHS winter crisis but did nothing, theguardian.com, 3 January) notes that Jeremy Hunt “sent out a civil servant, Prof Keith Willett, director of acute care [to be interviewed on the radio], because he couldn’t be asked the crucial political question”.Is “couldn’t be asked” another of the Guardian’s famous spelling mistakes?